DIARXISb4 AND BLACK NATIONALISM IN

Tf-W 1960's :

THE ORIGINS OF

REVOLUTIONARY BLACK NATIONALISM

by

John Bracey

Paper to be presented at 72nd Annual Meetingof the

Organization of American HistoriansNew Orleans, Louisiana

April 14, 1979

Session : Marxism and Afro-American History

Moderator : Herbert Aptheker

Panelists : Mark Solomon, Herbert Shapiro

Commentators :

Ewart Guinier, Neil R . Mcl~~Ii.llen

One of the major problems inherent in attempting to ~rxite the his-

tory of events and a period in which one was actively involved, and to

assess ideas and viewpoints to which one was/is deeply conunitted is

that of perspective .

It is quite probable that it is muct~ too early

to be able to write an analysis of the 1960's that will hame much valid-

ity several years hence . The events are much too close for those of

us involved and many relevant sources are still not avail<~ble, e .g .,

those of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies> . I think

that this is certainly true of the histories and analyses of the civil

rights and Black liberation movements that have appeared wthus farosuch

as the general surveys of Robert Brisbane, Black Activism :

Racial

Revolution in the United States, 1954-1970,tVa1ley Forge, Pa . : Judson

Press, 1974 and Thomas Brooks, Walls Come T~nnbling Down :

A History o:F

the Civil Rights Movement, 1940-1970 ~ Englewood Cliffs, N .J . :

Prentice-

Hall, 1974 and the books by sociologists Thomas Blair and Alphonso

Pincl~tney . l

While it is possible to point out the quantifiable gains and losses

achieved by Black America there is a considerable debate as to what

they all mean . During this return to the "end of ideology" the great

debates of the 1960's :

black nationalism vs . integration, socialism

vs . black capitalism, armed struggle vs, non-violence, etc ., generate

neither interest nor enthusiasm especially among black students who

if eighteen or nineteen years old~were five years old when Malcolm X

wss killed, two years old when the march on Washington tcvok place, and

infants or unborn during the freedom rides and sit-ins .

Even more

significant, and disturbing is the tendency on the part of scholars and

the general public to read back into the early pre-Watts 7960's the con-

sciousness of the later Black Power, Black Panther "we arE~ an African

people" period .

This realization struck me quite forcefully as I began to review

my files of documents and the periodical literature of thE~ early 1960's .

The political naivety of myself and my colleagues/comrades~~and the vacuum

in which we tried to work out our ideology was staggering,

The actual.

tone and ambiance of this period is missing in all the analyses I have

mentioned and is best conveyed in the autobiographies, bi<~graphies, and

(oral histories)~ j that have begun to appear . The autobiographies of

Julius Lester and James Forman are quite effective, that c~ .f Bobby Seale

less so .

Peter Goldman's study of Malcolm X's last years and Howell

Raine's oral history of the civil rights movement though marred by an

integrationist bias~do capture the flavor of the period . 2

What I will attempt in this paper is to present the broad outline:

of my assessment of the sources of the D4arxist and Black :nationalist

ideas that were fused into the ideology known as revoluti~~mary Black

nationalism . 3 In briefj revolutionary Black nationalism aaivocates the

overthrow by any means necessary of capitalism in the United States and

the seizing of power by the Black proletariat as part of ~ world-wide

revolution of the masses of Africa and the Third World .

'This ideology

developed among a number of Black college age students an3 activists

during the period frcen 1959-196 finding its clearest organizational

expression in the Revolutionary Action Movement though it was also held

by activists in ~NCC, Core, Act and numerous local nationalist organiza-

tions . The indepth analysis of the many sources I will mention cannot; be

done within the time and space allowed . For that analysi:~ you will have

to wait for the longer version that will be published in ~rhe near future .

As a final caveat : I will not attempt to factox out my on~rn involvement

in such groups as Core (Chicago Chapter), Act, and the Re,~rolutionary

Action Movement .

In fact my own experiences often will sv;rve as a guide

through this material . My experiences were not typical, 'out they also

weren't unique .

When I speak of we I mean the group of young Black

Nationalists who were active in such urban centers as Chia~ago, Cleveland,

Detroit, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, Washington artd Oakland .

It is hard to measure either our total nwnbers or influence . To attempt

that measurement is one of my long-range research tasks .

One theme that emerged as I traced the confluence of Marxism and

Black Nationalism is the paradoxical (or contradictory) one of white

Marxists fueling Black nationalism through their advocacy of the study

of Afro-American history and of radical African nationalists, and Black

nationalists urging the study of Marxism .

This wasn't

self-evident during the confusing and hot-house atmosphere of the early

1960's .

In retrospect it is quite clear and will help serve to organize

this paper which will begin with a discussion of the intellectual climate

at one Black college in the late 1950's and then move to the presentation

of the international and domestic sources of the Marxist and Black

nationalist ideas that were ^post influential during the i~eriod from

1959 through 196 .

At the height of the Cold War and anti-corrrmunist hys~reria of the

Eisenhower years a free flow of ideas acid knowledge about haw societiEa

can or should be organized did not exist in the United St,~tes . Basic

works by Marx, Engels, Lenin--not to mention Mao, Gramsci, Lukacs, et al--

were available only in collections of ~n.ippets, if at all . Professors

who were knowledgeable about Marxism were reluctant to let it be known,

and discussed Marxist ideas only in a most cautious and tentative man-

ner .

Liberal ideology was so predominant that its apologists could pro-

claim that ideologies were non-existent or irrelevant . The situation

concerning the discussion of the future of Black Americans was equally

constraining .

Few of DuBois' writings were in print or r°adily available .

The full-length studies of Marcus Garvey~ and of Blacks and the left

were misinformed and/or hostile .

The dominant ideology was non-violent

integrationism and the mood was the optimism expressed in "From Slavery

to Freedom"h and "Free By '63," and "Freedom Now."

As an eighteen year old freshnan at Howard University in 1959, I

was fortunate to have friends, teachers and fellow students wino were

much coirnnitted to racial equality and who exhibited a range of view

points that I found bewildering . To mention just the stu6.ents~the names

of Laurence Henry, Dion Diamond, Timothy Jenkins, Courtland Cox,

Claude Brown, Stokeley Carmichael and Michael Thelwell should be famil-

iar to any serious student of the early days of the civil. rights move-

ment . Those from the West Indies were truly Pan-African~.st in outlook

and kept up with current events in Africa as well as the West Indies

including Cuba .

It was from this group that I first heard the view that

a revolution (other than the American Revolution) was not necessarily a

bad thing .

I heard the view that socialism might be a so ::Lution to the

social and economic problems of Black people .

A11 of this was beyond my comprehension and I made m connection

between those ideas and the endless trips into the South ~~~r to Maryland's

Eastern Shore or to downtown Washington, D .C . to sit-in at lunch counters,

restaurants, bus stations, etc . As a product o£ the Washington, D .C .

schools which provided segregated, but hardly inferior, e3ucation at

the elementary and junior high school levels, and of a reluctantly in-

tegrated high school, I was not at all convinced that white people had

much to offer the world .

I was taught they kept Blacks seg-

regated because they feared open competition with a people who had

weathered their best shots, and still endured and kept coming .

The ex-

cessive interracialism was what curtailed my interest in the Beat

movement led at Howard by a philosophy student, Percy Jol-~nston, who

made us aware of LeRoi Jones seminal contributions . The Howard faculty

had a number of extremely capable and committed scholars,

The efforta

of the Law faculty have been amply documented by Richard Kluger in

Simple Justice (N .Y . :

Knopf, 1976) but the influence of many of the

others has not been thoroughly assessed . E . Franklin Fra~zier's

Black Bourgeoisie (N .Y . :

Free Press, 1957), was a major topic of dis

cussion and among black college students the term'

rgi~e"or bourgeois

was a term of derision one applied to other Blacks, and riot to the

white owners of the means of production .

In their Introduction to

Social Science courses Frazier and Chancellor ti1(illiams o-F The Destruc=,

tion of Black Civilizati on (Dubuque, Iowa : Kend,~~.~ll/Hunt,

1971), taught and recommended C . Wright Mills' White Collar

and The Power Elite, and Mills himself visited Howard to

give the Sidney Hillman lecture during the 1959-~~0 academic

year . Tt is difficult to estimate the influence of Mills'

ideas among the general population of Black students either

at Howard or elsewhere, but his discussion of th~~ American

"power structure" in The Power Elite, along with Floyd Hunter's

Community Power Structure , (Chapel Hill :

U . of N .~~ . Press, :1953)

gave the civil rights movement one of its favorite phrases :

white power structure . 4 The usage must have been fairly ex-

tensive since it provoked Arnold Rose to write

page book attempting to

Hunter . 5

In addition, the Howard faculty generally

attuned to and sympathetic towards the leaders

(or soon-to-be) independent African states . Frazier headed

the African Studies Program, Chancellor Williams was soon to

publish the first of his studies of African history and society,

The Rebirth of African Civilization, (Washington, D .C . :

a five hundred

refute the contentions of Mills and

were very much

of the newly

Public Affairs Press, 1961) . William Leo Hansberry's in~

fiuence was still being felt~and Nnandi Azikewe invited Howard

to help recruit faculty for Nigerian universities . Kwame

~01~rumah, Leopold Senghor and Patrice Lumumba all visited

Howard during this period . Mercer Cook, then Professor of

Romance Languages, translated Leopold Senghor's essays On

African Socialism , (N .Y . : Praeger, 1964) . Profv~ssors Cook

and Frazier were active in the Society of African Culture

(S .A .C) and were only two of the six Howard faculty to contri-

bute to Africa Seen by American Neg roes , (Paris : Presence

Africaine, 1958) . The others were Rayford Logan, historian ;

Hildrus Poindexter, medical doctor and public health specialist,

Dorothy Porter, curator of the Moorland collection and James

Porter, artist and art historian . Logan, Porter and Cook

were also active in the American Society of African Culture

formed in 1957 as an affiliate of S .A .C . We have here the

paradox of integrationist Black scholars encouraging an

identification with African nationalists most of whom ad-

vocated some form of socialism . 6 Ta continue with the African

connection, Nkrumah's Ghana welcomed such radical Blacks as

W .E .B . DuBois, Shirley Graham DuBois, W . AlphaeL.s Hunton a.nd

Julian Mayfield . George Padmore served as Nkrumah~s adviser

on African Affairs from 1957 until his death in 1959 . Alex

Quaison-Sackey, Ghana's ambassador to the United Nations,

was extremely popular among Blacks in New York wand Washington,

D .C . 7

The personal interaction between African n<tionalist>

and Afro-American civil rights activists was im~,~ortant in

broadening the outlook of Black Americans . The ".~isits to

Africa by Malcolm X and James Farmer are well kanown, but

not enough emphasis has been given tot~i~,person~l influence

of Quaison-Sackey, and Oginga Odinga of Kenya and Muhammed

Babuof Zanzibar . Oginga Odinga visited the South in late

1963 and met with SNCC activists . The event is described in

Forman's The Making of Black Revolutionaries , ('p . 360) and

preserved in song on The Freedom Singe rs Sing of Freedom Now!

(D4ercury Records M .G . 20924, 1964, side 2, cut 2) . Odinga

of course was imprisoned by Jomo Kenyatta in 1966 for his

attempt to point out the dangers of neo-colonialism in, Not

Yet Uhuru : An Autobiography, (N .Y . : Hill ~ Wang, 1967) .

the 1 .959-64 period Kenyatta, of Mau Mau fame was popular

among nationalists . Sweatshirts with Kenyattds picture en-

titled "Burning Spear" were a minor fad . SekoU Toure in-

vited SNCC workers to visit Guinea in October, 1964, and had

a good reputation among young Blacks as being sympathetic to

the struggle of Black Americans . All of these p~.frican leaders

Marxist and socialists of varying degrees were the African.

students--primarily Nigerian and Ghanaian--who ]ed the Pan.-

African Student Organization in the Americas (P .A .S .~D .A .)

which was quite active during tha.s period in thE; Midwest .x ~.o ku

The leaders I knew best were Chimerenand Obi Wa71.i of Nigeria

in the literature of Marxism .. Their

active involvement with Afro-American nationali :~ts caused

their deportation in 1965 . 8

Events in the Congo from 1960 to 1964, i .e,, the as-

sassination of hatrice Lumumba in January, 1961 and the U .S .

intervention in 1964 helped to dispel our allusions con

cerning the ease with which African nations were: gaining

who were well read

In

independence and moving to implement socialism . The U .S .

role in the killing of Lumumba provoked a group of Afro-

American intellectuals, activists and artists to carry out

a loud demonstration at the U .N . Security Councia- in February,

1961 . 9 Dan Watts, a New York based architectancl one of tine

group's organizers founded the Liberation Commiti:ee for

Africa and began the publication of the offset nc;wletter tluat

evolved into Liberator, (1961-1971) one of the mast influen-

tial journals of Black radical, nationalist and l'an-Africanist

thought in the early 1960's . Discussions of Mar~ :ism,

and revolution were a part of almost every issue .

The story of Robert Williams and the Monroe ;, N .C

fair are part of the general history of the 1960's (though

Howell Raines manages to omit

is Rested) . 10 What I want to

ism

social -

af-

any mention of it i.n My Soul

stress here is the fact that

when Williams fled into exile he went to a socialist country

Cuba (1962-1966) ~arid later to China (1966-1969.

p.espite Williams militancy a careful reading of The Crusade r

reveals a number of statements that support inte~~ration . A,t

The - Crusader went largely unread among my colleag~,ues in the

w~~~~,any raten the exception of "Potential of a Minority Revolu'tion,"

Mid-West precisely because of Williams' basic integrationism~

and~what seemed to be an overemphasis on the relevance of

the Cuban and Chinese experiences to Black Americans . Williams'

pronouncements were no more help to the Revolutionary Action

Movement in day-today organizing than the demandl for separate

states was to the Nation of Islam or "self-determination in

the Black Belt" was to the C .P .U .S .A . . What Wit Tams did

was to force a study of the revolutionary proces .~es in Cuba

and China, and of the Marxism-leninism espoused 'hy Fide1,

Che and Mao . Williams also effectively championed revolu-

tionary internationalism, at least among Third r~~rld countvries~

and served to balance the provincialism of the Nation of

Tslam and the traditional Garveyite Black nationalist groups .ll

The other major Black nationalist who encouraged revolu-

tionary internationalism and interest in socialism was

Malcolm X . The favorable press coverage given him in the

Socialist Worker's Party paper The Militant , his favorable

reception in radical African countries during his visits in

1964, and his well-known interest in world affairs were all

factors in Malcolm's ~.ncreasingly strong anti-capitalist .

statements . In his most famous speech "Message to the Grass

Roots," Malcolm challenges his audience to consider what a

revolution actually is and to examine the revolutions that

ce in America in 1776, China, Kenya and Algeria . l2

In sum then among a significant segment of Black students,

faculty, artists, writers and activists, there eras an active

interest in Marxism-leninism and socialism as t1-~.ese ideologies

related to the problems of newly independent African and

West Indian nations and increasingly as they related to the

situation of Blacks in the United States . Neit}uer among t:he

Africans, the }Vest Indians, nor in relation to }clack Americans

took

1G

was Marxism seen as a mandate requiring interracial coopera-

tion .

Neither was any great attention paid to events in `~~e

SovietUnion~nor to such classic Marxist debates as the cor-

rectness of Stalin vs . Trotsky, etc . . Marxism-leninism and

socialism were offered as vital to the effective liberation

of colored peoples throughout the world . The feeling if ex-

pressed at all, was that white workers were more race con-

scious then class conscious, i .e ., their primary identifica-

tion was as whites rather than as workers, and on the whole

were notoriously unreliable allies . The exceptions so often

cited by white Marxists,e .g ., the populist movement, C .I .O .,

and C .P . in the 1930's served to prove the rule .

TI

The interaction between the white student m~~wement and

the civil rights movement has been much discusse~3~ though

many individuals in the student movement, i .e ., V .S .A, and

the newly formed S .D .S . were sympathetic to Black nationalist

ideas and supported some efforts led by Blacks The thrust

of these groups during the pre-jVatts rebellion period was

clearly integrationist,rt l ~enerally the younger Black

nationalists kept the~.r distance . The relation between Black

nationalists and the traditional left organizations--the

Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist WorkersIv a'~"5 k y ~~ S f

Party, and several smaller

-

splinter groups--has

not been explored in depth . T will try to sketch out some

of the intellectual interaction that took place during the

1959-1964 period .

Members of the Socialist Party were very active and in-

fluential in the civil rights movement

:, were vocally

anti-Black nationalist, and were firm advocates of non

violent integration, change by education and persuasion .

The writings of B~yard Rustin, Thomas Kahn and !august Meier

express this point of view . Advocates of social democracy

were dominant in Core until 1965 . In addition the intel-

lectual influence of members of the Socialist Party and the

Young People's Socialist League (Y .P .S .L .~s) remained

negligible because of a basic contradiction in i:heir ap-

1 2

proaches to the struggle of Blacks and to the st :~te of Israel .

In numerous discussions with Y .P .S .L .s~and with '~aul Mendeason

a faculty member who was quite active in the socialist party

during my undergraduate day; at Roosevelt and within the

Chicago chapter of Core, Blacks were told that l .) armed

struggle and violence were corrupting in and of themselvesed

and to totalitarianism, 2 .) that Black Americans were aA

minority and they resort to the use of weapons, even in self-

defense, would provoke genecidal repression, and 3 .) that as-

similation and amalgamation should be the goal of mankind,

and therefore, nationalism of any sort was divisive and

reactionary . l3

These same people supported the state of Israel which

was established by a minority who were intensely national-

istic and separatist, who used violence to achieve their

aims and who remained armed to the teeth : Futhermore, in

pushing our argument we never got a satisfactory answer to

the question if integration between Blacks and their white

oppressors was such a great idea why didn't the Jewish

population pursue this strategy with their oppressors in

Germany and in Eastern Europe .

The influence of the Communist Party, or of several of

its members concerned with "the Negro people," v~ias much

greater than that of the social-democrats but ~;~aat probably

not in the way that the Party intended . First, the major

contribution to the development of Black nation~:~lism were

1s

1 4

the works on Negro history by Dr . DuBois and Her1~ert ApthekerCou have to imagine what it was like when From S lavery toFreedom was the only readily available survey te :~ct, whenStanley Elkins Slavery (Chicago :

U .

of Chicago :I?ress,

1959)was the source on slavery with Stampp's The PecuLiarInsti -tution , (N .Y . : Vintage, 1956 a poor second. TJhe only oneof DuBois' work in print by a commercial publishv;rwas The Souls of Black Folk , (N .Y . : Fawcett, 19~ii1) . WorldPublishing Company issued a paperback edition of Black Re -construc tion in America in 1964 . If one wished wto pursueDr . DuBois' ideas further the C .P .U :S .A . either J,~ublishedor distributed : In Battle for Peace : The Story of 'qty 83rd

Birthday ,~N .Y . : Masses ~ Mainstream, 195); The '.Black Flamc:

Trilogy : The Ordeal of Mansart , Mansart Builds ,~ School , endWorlds of Color (N .Y . : Mainstream Publishers, 1!x57, 1959, .1961) ; John Brown (N .Y . : International Publishers, 1962 andAn ABC of Color , (Berlin : Seven Seas Publishers, 196, Cnter-

n.ational Publishers had already published W . A1pJiaeus Hunton's

Decision in Africa , (1957, 1960) and in 1963 broixght out

Nkrumah's Africa DMust Unite . All of Nkrumah's bvooks

1963 were published by Tnternational Publishers.,

Dr . Aptheker's works were indespensable . Tlhe singlemost potent antidote to the ideas that Blacks havi no history

of struggle or that it always took the form of lv;gal actions

and non-violent protest was American Negro Slave Revolts

issued in a paperback edition by International Pr,~blishers :in

since

1963 . It would be difficult of overestimate the importancE~

of this book on young Black nationalist activists . It was

that link with that part of our past that .few thought even

existed or were willing to ':elp us find . Almost on a par

with American Negro Slave Revolts were what were known af-

fectionately as "the Documents" : A Documentar~l~iistory of

the Negro People in the United States , two volumes (N .Y . :

Citadel Press, 1962, 1964) . "The Documents," especially

volume one, opened our eyes to the complexity of our history

and to the emense talents of our forebearers who seemed to

have anticipated ~~'~

the form and content of every

strategy or tactic that we thought we were inventing for

the first time . Dr . Aptheker had placed before us the words

of such giants as H . Ford Douglass, Martin Delany, David

Walker, Henry Highland Ga~et, John S . Rock~and or course

Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass .

We read and re read,

marveled at and discussed Douglass' 4th of July speech

numerous times .

L~k ~k.

James Allen's Reconstructionl~

o ~(N .Y . : International Publishers,

our view of Reconstruction

Tn political terms the C .P .U .S .A . was

dependent presence in tha civil rights movement~,and the

politics of the Party often were not of much interest to

us outsiders . Little attention was paid to C .P .. positions

on national and world affairs in general . On t}~e contemporary

gave us

the Battle for Democracy- ,

1963) along with DuBois

not a~ . strong in.-

1 6

racial situation the C .P . literature was anti-nattionalist,

(generally ignoring Robert Williams, Malcolm X, the Nation

of Islam), pro-integration and consistently in f,~3vor of Black

and white working-class unity, l4

My initial experiences with Black communist> was puz-

zling . In Chicago, Ishmael Flory headed the African American

Heritage Association (A .A .H .A .) and was active in a wide

range of civil rights activities . It was Comrade Flory who

sold (or gave) the books by Aptheker, DuBois, Nkrumah, ~ha~t

I have mentioned, and who had on the back shelves of his

book store an amazing stock of C .P . pamphlets on the race

question dating back to the 1930's . Flory was an orthodox

Marxist with the exception that he took as his focus the

struggles of African and Afro-American peoples . Flory con-

sistently berated us for our nationalism, but always wore a

leopard skin African hat~and said that Blacks were Afro-

Americans not Negroes . More confusing was the influence of

Blacks close to the C .P . on the Nation of Islam in Chicago .

Muhammad Speaks was edited by a Black Marxist and the

University of Islam was headed by a Black P~iarxist who con-

tinued to be active in the A .A .H .A .

There was little interaction with Blacks ire . the national

leadership of the C .P . with the exception of Cl~i.ude Lightfoot

who was from Chicago . Lightfoot's views in per<_~onal con

versations never deviated from his publisY~ed po ;~itions .

The content of Freedomways, a quarterly founded in the

1V

and West Indian nationalists and Pan-Africanists, on the

domestic front the overwhelming tendency was to support

integrationism and to call for working class unity .

In sum the C .P .'s influence was primarily i-a its making

available significant studies and documents of tze history

o£ Black people . The Black members of the C .P . host in con

tact with younger nationalists shared the intell°ctual focus

on Africa and Afro-Americans on one hand yet shared the party's

integrationist viewpoint in their support of Core, . SNCC a:nd

?+Iartin Luther King, Jr . . This was too much confusion for

young minds .who were looking for clear theory as a basis

for a coherent effective practice . The distinc~ron between

the willing acceptance of the C .P .'s contribution to the

study of Black history and the unwillingness to accept theix

analysis of contempory events is crucial to an understanding

of the reaction of many Black nationalists to the ideas of

Harold Cruse .

~he interest of the Socialist Worker's Party (S~ ..W .P .)

and the Young Socialist Alliance (Y .S .A .) in Black national-

v

~ A~

ism included forming the Committee to Aid the T4cnroe De ,necessary

fendents which supported Robert 1'Villiams and the others

indicted in A4onroe, North Carolina in 1961 and 1962, provid-

ing press coverage for Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam a.nd

cv ~c,f

Spring, 1961, by Blacks close to or members of t :I1e C .P ., was

much too eclectic and diverse to summarize Basil°,~ or fairly

here . However, despite the extensive coverage of African

17'

and publishing post-humorously a large number of Malcolm's

speeches and a biography supporting the short-lived Freedom

Now Party, and giving ideological support for some Black

nationalist ideas and progrwms . l 5 The problem with the S .'W .P .

and Y .S .A . was that despite their rhetoric their organization

was overwhelmingly white and few nationalist cared what they

thought of nationalist programs and organization . hle were

quite willing to accept their very valuable efforts to get

Malcolm " s ideas into print and to cover nationalist activi-

ties in The Militant , but LeRoy McCrae and Clifton DeBerry

were deemed to be every bit as integrationist as Bayaxd

Rustin, Lightfoot, Ben Davis, et al .

The only other input from the organized left during

this period was from two Trotskyists splinter groups based

in Detroit : The Facing Reality Committee which included

Martin Glaberman and Gxace and James Boggs, and The News and

Letters Committee led by Raya Dunayerskaya . The pressures

of time prevent a full discussion of the influer.~ce of the

Boggs . James Boggs' The American Revolution : Pages from a

Negro Worker s Notebook , (N .Y . :

Monthly Review F''ress, 1963)

has a chapter "Rebels with a Cause" that supports the

nationalist view on the necessity for independent struggle

linked to the thesis that the current Black movement is the

leading force for revolutionary change in the U .S . . The

Boggs were also,.quite active in revolutionary n<~tionaliGt

activities in Detroit and published "Towards Re~~~olutionary

is

19

Action Movement Manifesto" in the March, 1964 issues of Cor-

respondence their newsletter . The News and Letters Com-

mittee published a monthly newspaper edited by Charles Denby,

a Black worker . News ~ Letters which reported a:nd commented

on the racial situation and two pamphlets that g~~t .fairly

wide circulation among Black nationalists : Raya Dunayevskaya's

"Nationalism, Communism, Marxist Hu manism and the Afro-Asian

Revolutions" (Detroit, 1961) and "American Civilization on

Trial : The Negro as Touchstone of History," (Detroit, May,

1963) . The News ~ Letters group had no practice to speak

of and Denby's recent autobiography isn~t much help in fila-

ing in the blanks for this period . l6 rMy admitte3ly premature'

conclusion is that the anti-Leninism of these gx~ups and the

recognition of their own petty-bourgeois class origins

painted them into a corner where no action was possible, and

where the study-group was the only legitimate form of organi ,

zation~

The years 1963 - August, 1965, saw the attempt to develop

a theory that would synthesize the divergent concerns and

interests that were characteristic of a developing revolu

tionary Black nationalism . SNCC was praised for the courage

of its activists and for its skill in organizing and mobiliz-

ing Blacks in the rural South who were considered hopelessly

bent or broken by racial oppression . But SNCC received its

share of the general critique of non-violence, integrationism,

and the willingness . t o continuously place Blacks in situations

differences, all share this assumption * Many of us were

not so sure that America was worth saving in any form, and

none of us wished to serve as a vanguard of a struggle to

bring better conditions that whites would reap tenefits of~

The one writer who made the greatest stride in pro-

ducing the analysis needed was Harold Cruse, not . the Cruse

2~

where they could be assaulted and murdered . The Nation of

Islam and the various heirs of the Garvey movement were not

active politically and were burdened by religious mysticism

and/or an overly romanticized view of pre-coloni~.l Africa .

What was needed was an ideology and analysis that would offer

a coherent theory of the history of Afro-Americans as it re-

lated to U .S . history ; the relationship of the contemporary

struggle of Afro-American to those of Africans and other

peoples of the Bandung world ; the development of a class

stratified Black America ; and the relevance of Niarxist-

Leninist views on the revolutionary process to the situation

of Black Americans . lae needed a theory that would include

SNCC activism, Malcolm's nationalism and Robext LUilliams~

armed struggle . The Marxist left was conscious of the im-

portance of the Black struggle, but always as an aspect o~

the working-class struggle for a socialist transformation o .f

the United States and imperialism worldwide . ~Apthekers

"The Soul of the Republic ," Breitman's "How A Minority Can

neczss~r~

Change Society," News ~ Letters American Civiliz ation on

Trial : The Negro as Touchstone of History , despite their

of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual which wa .>n't pub-

lished until 1967, but the Cruse of "Revolutionarry National-

~.sm and the Afro-American," Studies on The Left , (Vol . 11,

~Io . 3, 1962, pp . 12-25) and the 1963-1964 Liberawtor articles"The Roots of Black Nationalism (March and R~Ovr~i'l,, 1964) ,

D4arxism and the Negro, (May and June 1964), "The Economics

of Black Nationalism," (July ;. August, 1964) and RRebellion or

Revolution (October, 1963 ; November, 1963 ; Decemlloer, 1963 ;

January, 1964) all reprinted in Rebellion or Revoolution ,

(N .Y . : Wm . Morrow ~ Co ., 1968) .

Cruse was not well-known outside of New Yorac City and

"Revolutionary Nationalism" was brought to the attention of

nationalists in the Mid-West by white members of the New

Left who distributed Studies on the Left . I rec .~.ll buying

my copy primarily because of the attractive covey, and not

reading it until the summer of 196,3 when a Black friend,

familiar with the New York scene, was discussing Cruse, and

I remembered seeing his name in the magazine . I and my

colleagues were greatly impressed by it and it swoon became

a major building block in our attempts atformul~o.ting

a synthesis of Marxism and Black nation~~~lism .

Much of the later analyses of the Revolutionary action Movc~-

ment, Act and the shortlived Organization of Bla~~~k Power

(1965) wee based on Cruse's early essays . l7

Let's look now at "Revolutionary Nationalismn and the

Afro-American ." In the opening section subtitled "Revolu-

2

tionary Nationalism and Western Marxism," Cruse sees the

failure of "American Marxists" to anticipate and give early

support the Cuban Revolution as proof of their i:Zability to

understand revolutionary nationalism . This failvare, Cruse

continues, has "special significance to the American Negro ."

Why, because, Cruse asserts :

For the Negro has a relationship to the dominantculture of the United States similar to that ofcolonies and semi-dependents to their particularforeign overseers : the Negro is the Americ~.nproblem of underdevelopment . The failure ofAmerican Marxists to understand the bond betweenthe Negro and the colonial peoples of the w~~rldhas led to their failure to develop theoriesthat would be of value to Negz~oes in theUnited States . (p . 12)

As the colonial world has ,seized the revolutionary initiative

from the Left in the West so has the Negro from American

Marxists . Cruse concludes that :

Here, the Negro is the leading revolutionaryforce, independent and ahead of the Marxistsin the development of a movement towards socialchange .

(p .

13)

The next section "The American Negro : A Subject of

Domestic Colonialism : begins to sketch out the colonial

analogy its relationship to the various forms of nationalism .

Cruse also makes a distinction between the nationalist and

the integrationist traditions that date back to the turn of

the century . Cruse sees Robert Williams as embodying a

"third trend" of "revolutionary" integrationists . Through-

out this section Cruse is critical of American Marxists who

fail to understand or deliberately observe these distinctions .

2 2

"Integration vs . Separation : History and Interpreta-

tions," examines the DuBois-B .T .,Washington, i .e ., DuBois

(politics) vs . Washington (economics), controversy within

the framework of domestic colonialism, and quite critical

of the analysis of Dr . Aptheker and of other members of_ the

C :P .

The concluding section "Negro Nationalism and the Left,"

begins by attacking the concept of the "Negro People" and

asserts the importance of class divisions among Negroes .

Cruse says that except for the question of civil rights,

there is no unity between the Negro working and middle-classes,

and that the Negro bourgeoisie has abdicated all responsi-

bilities to the national Black community . Cruse zeroes inW ~v

on the "dilemma" of the Black intellectual h is attracted to

the revolutionary nationalism of the colonial world, but is

reluctant to adopt a nationalistic stance in domestic af-

fairs . The masses of Black workers seek economic control

of their community as a prerequisite for an effective

politics . Marxists have ignored nationalism and! therefore

appeal only to members of the Black middle-class .

The issue of the way to achieve racial equality has to

be addressed now and can't be postponed or seen as an in-

evitable by-product of socialism . The issues of separation

must be faced squarely as an inevitable response to American

racism . Cruse concludes by placing the burden c~n the Negro

himself :

2 3

Due to his semi-dependent status in society, theAmerican Negro is the only potentially revolu-tionary force in the United States today . Fromthe Negro, himself, must come the revolutionarysocial theories of an e :.onomic, cultural andpolitical nature that will be his guides forsocial action--the new philosophies of socialchange . (p . 25)

To young Black middle-class intellectual/activistsA

withnhealthy distrust of white America and its institutions

Cruse had much to offer . Cruse gave us a theory of our

history, he related it to the struggles of the Bandung

World, he explained the importance of intra-Black class

divisions, he was not anti-Marxist only anti-Western D4arxism,

he articulated the reasons for our alienation from U .S .

society, and he challenged us to join the struggle with the

masses of our people and to produce the theories that would

help them achieve liberation . Cruse explained our affinity

for SNCC, Malcolm X and Robert Williams . All of the theoriz-

ing and strategizing, etc ., during the 1963-65 period was

grounded in Crusean theory . Cruse got much the best of it

in'the subsequent exchanges in Stud-ies - on- The Left, (Vol . III,

No . 1, 1962, pp . 57-71), with Richard Greenleaf and Clark

Forman . We found Cruse's distinction between tr~.e ideas of

Marx and those of Lenin particularly useful . Cruse's

Liberator articles were read as further explications of the

basic ideas expressed in "Revolutionary Nationalism ." As

the first skirmishes in the "race wars" Cruse pn~edicted

(p . 25) began to appear-(Birmingham, 1963 ; Har1E~m, Rochester,

2~

Philadelphia, 1964) his analysis grew in stature . With

Malcolrn's death and the Watts Rebellion, Cruse's insights

appeared to be confirmed . What we thought we were in was

the first stages of an armed struggle for the national

liberation of Black America . The realization that this was

not so~and might not even be possible came with further

analysis, and equally importaiit~more age and experience . As

of August, 1965, the ideology known as revolutionary Black

nationalism seemed sufficient .

2 5

FOOTNOTES

1 . Blair, Thomas ; Retreat to the ghetto : The Fl nd o a;Dream, (N . Y . : Hill and Wang, 1977), ar~d AlphonsoPinckney, Red Black and Green : Black_Nati,.o. .nalismin the United States . (N .Y . : Cambrid~~;e UniversityPress, 1976) .

2 . Forman, James ; The Making of Black Revoluticmaries :A Personal Account ,

(N . Y . :

D4acMillan C;o . ,

1972) ;Julius Lester, All is Well , (N .Y . : Wia.liam Morrow

Co ., 1976) ; A Lonely Rage : The Autot~iogra by ofBobby Seal, (N . . .

antam oo s, ~Tg;'~ ; eter_

God,The Death and Life of Malcolm X, (N .Y . :Harper ~ Row, 1973) and Hotiaell Raines, M~ Soul is~Rested : Movement Days in the Deep Sou_°~~h Remember.ed,(N .Y . : Bantam Books, 1978) .

3 . For definitions of Black nationalism see Jo1m Bracey, et al(eds .) Black Nationalism in America, (Indianapol :is :Bobby-Merrill, 1970 , pp . xxvm ,

04-505 ; Bracey,"Black Nationalism Since Garvey" in Nathan Hugginset al (eds .) Key Issues in the Afro-American Ex-perience, (N . . .

Harcourt Brace Jovanomc~,171) ,Vol . II, pp . 262, 276-278 ; Black America, (Summer-Fall, 1965) , p . 2 .

4 . The term is mentioned by several interviewees in HowellRaine's M Soul is Rested, pp . 156, 168, and esp .457, and is t e su- j~ect of an article by J .H . O'Dell"How Powerful is the Southern Power Structure,"Freedomways, (Winter, 1964), pp . 76-92 .

5 .~ Rose, Arnold, The Power Structure :

Politica l Process inAmerican Society , N .Y . : Ox or U. Press, 1 67 ,pp . xiil-xiv .

26

6 . Logan, Rayford ; Howard University : The Firy st Hundred.Years 1867-1967,

N.Y. :

New

or

Unmersity Press,pp .

, 539-569 passim ; Am . S .A .C . (ed .)Pan-Africanism Reconsidered, (Berkele~~ : Universityo

ali

orma Press,

1

,

pp .

v-vii,,

29-34,

St .Clair Drake, "Negro Americans and the Africa Int:ere i"in John P . Davis (ed .) American Negro ReferenceBook , (Englewood Cliffs, N .Y . : Prent:'~ce-Hall, 1966),pp . 677, 688, 698, 701, 705 .

14 . See The Negro Question in the U .S .A . : Resolu tionAdopted by the 17t Convention ~t-FeC� P .U .S .A .,To ether with the Ac~c~ress to the Convemi~lon blau e Li t oot, N .Y . : New entury, L~,~

also Clu e Ligli~oot, Turning Point in Freedom Road_ :the Fi ht to End Jim Crow , N .Y . : New n~entury,1 2 , ancT-Henry Wmston et al, Negro L :ibera.tion :A Goal for All Americans, (N .Y . :

N-ew~izrrentu lls ers, 19 4 . Also of interest is Herbert

Aptheker, Soul of the Republic : The Ne gro Today ,(N .Y . : Marzam ~ Munsell, 1964 .

15 . George Breitman (ed.) Malcolm X Speaks (N .Y . : b4eritPublishers, 1965) and Malcolm X : The M,~n and HisIdeas, (N .Y . : Pioneer Pu lis ers, March,1~5~-r~eitman's biography and other collections of

Malcolm's speeches were published after the periodbeing discussed .

16 . Charles Denby, Indignant Heart : A Black Wor1cer'sJournal, (Boston : Sout En ress, 1 7i3~-

28

17 . Dan Freeman, "Nationalist Student Conference," Liberator,(July, 1964), p . 18 . "Roots of Revolutionary

.

Nationalism," Black America ,

(Fall,

196 0 , pp .7-12, a collection of brief statements 1~y variousBlack nationalists including Cruse, and the unsignedarticles "The Relationship of the Revolv.~tionaryAfro-American Movement to the Bandung Rew~olution, :and "Black Nationalism on the Right" in BlackAmerica, (Summer-Fall, 1965) . Black Amer icawast e "t eoretical journal of Ram ." See ~~lso relaxStanford, "Revolutionary Nationalism an~i the Afro

.

American Student," Liberator, (January, 1965), pp .13-15 and Roland Sne 1Wgs, Afro-American Youthand the Bandung World," Liberator , (February,1965), pp . 4-7 .